Sam Reich

Reich was born on July 22, 1984, to Robert Reich, a lawyer who would later be appointed Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, and Clare Dalton, a law professor at Northeastern University.^[2][3] He grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts.^[2] His brother, Adam Reich, is a sociology professor at Columbia University.^[4][5]

In 2000, Reich dropped out of Buckingham Browne & Nichols School as a result of clinical depression and in order to pursue acting.^[6] Shortly thereafter, he moved to New York and founded the comedy group Dutch West, which focused on making comedy videos for the Internet.^[7][8] After being discovered by CollegeHumor in 2006, he was hired as Director of Original Content.^[9] He was then promoted to President of Original Content along with the premiere of The CollegeHumor Show on MTV in 2009.^[10]

In 2014, Reich founded Big Breakfast, CollegeHumor's offshoot production company, and moved CollegeHumor's video team to Los Angeles.^[11] The company has since produced Adam Ruins Everything on TruTV;^[12] Middle of the Night Show on MTV;^[13] Time Traveling Bong on Comedy Central;^[14] The Britishes on DirecTV;^[15] I Want My Phone Back on Comcast's Watchable;^[16] Bad Internet^[17] and Rhett and Link's Buddy System on YouTube Red.^[8]

With CollegeHumor, he collaborated on music videos with "Weird Al" Yankovic^[18] and United States First Lady Michelle Obama.^[19]

On January 8, 2020, it was announced that Reich was acquiring CollegeHumor from IAC which was transformed to the entity of CHMedia. This included the streaming service Dropout.^[20][21] At the time that IAC sold CollegeHumor, Reich asked fans to support the company by purchasing subscriptions to the streaming service.^[22] In 2020, Kate Knibbs of Wired commented that "Reich is beloved within the CollegeHumor community—WIRED spoke with more than a dozen former employees, and the praise was unanimously effusive, rare for someone who just laid a bunch of people off".^[23] Reich oversees the content created in Dropout and hosts some of the shows including Game Changer and Make Some Noise.

In 2023, Reich announced that the CollegeHumor brand name would be retired and rebranded to Dropout, to coincide with the streaming service.^[24]

Since 2011, Reich has been married to actress and writer Elaine Carroll,^[25] whom he met during summer camp in 2000.^[26] Together, they have collaborated on the web series Very Mary-Kate.^[25] In 2024, Reich stated that he and Carroll "both identify as like, a little queer".^[27]

Other awards

• Named to Forbes 30 Under 30 in Media Category.^[28]
• Named a multi-channel network 40 Under 40.^[29]